Spiny Puffball
Lycoperdon echinatum
Also called hedgehog puffball, spiny hedgehog puffball
A small round puffball densely armed with long dark brown spines that converge in tufts, leaving a net-like pattern where they fall. It is typically found on rich humus beneath beech.
Overview
Spiny Puffball (Lycoperdon echinatum) is the most heavily ornamented of the common small puffballs. Where the common puffball carries short conical gems, this species bears slender spines up to 6 mm long that lean together in groups of three or four to form pyramid-like tufts across the whole surface.
The spines start pale and darken to chocolate or purplish brown as the fruit body matures. When they finally break away, they leave a pale, reticulate, net-patterned surface that is almost as distinctive as the spines themselves.
It is a smaller, rounder fungus than the common puffball, with only a short sterile base, and it has a strong association with beech woodland on base-rich ground.
How to identify it
Fruiting body
Globose to slightly pear-shaped, 2–4 cm across, tapering below to a short, narrow, sterile base that is far less developed than in Lycoperdon perlatum.
Surface
Densely covered with long, slender, flexible spines 3–6 mm long, whitish at first, soon becoming dark brown to purple-brown. The spines converge at their tips in groups of three or four. Where they fall away, the underlying surface is smooth, brownish and marked with a fine reticulate network of scars.
Interior and spore mass
White and firm when young, then olive and finally powdery purple-brown to chocolate-brown. The small sterile base is spongy and paler. Spores escape through a single apical pore that opens as the head matures.
Spore print
Not applicable in the usual sense; the mature spore mass is purple-brown.
Where and when it grows
This species grows on rich humus and deep leaf litter in broadleaved woodland, showing a marked preference for beech and for calcareous or base-rich soils. It also occurs under oak and in mixed woodland, and occasionally on well-rotted woody debris in the litter layer.
Fruiting is from late summer through autumn. It is widespread but local across Europe and eastern North America, generally less abundant than the common puffball.
Ecological role
Lycoperdon echinatum is a humus saprophyte, breaking down accumulated beech leaf litter and fine organic matter in the topsoil. Its fruit bodies appear singly or in small scattered groups rather than large troops.
Spore release follows the same bellows mechanism used across the genus: the mature skin becomes papery and elastic, and impacts from raindrops force the purple-brown spore powder out through the apical pore.
Similar species
Lycoperdon perlatum has shorter conical spines that stand separately rather than converging in tufts, a much longer stalk-like sterile base, and an olive-brown rather than purple-brown spore mass. Lycoperdon nigrescens (the dusky puffball) has dark spines too but they are shorter and stiffer, and the fruit body is darker overall with a more marked preference for heath and conifer litter. Lycoperdon mammiforme has a white flaky, scaly veil that breaks into patches rather than true converging spines.
The combination of long converging brown spines, a small round body with only a short base, and purple-brown mature spore powder identifies this species.